The case for a single stream in education

Last week, a fellow TMI columnist was bombarded with hate mail and had police reports lodged against him for an article he wrote pertaining to Tamil schools. In that article, the writer questioned some alleged practices meant to increase the image of vernacular schools and boost their enrolment numbers.

That came as quite a surprise, given the upsurge in numbers of vernacular school enrolments in recent years. But how relevant are vernacular schools in Malaysia today?

During colonial days, education was kept to a minimum, the British had wanted to educate Malaysians well enough to conduct basic administrative tasks, but not too highly lest they start questioning those basic administrative tasks. Like many things, even education was segregated.

The British built English medium schools, mainly for the children of the elite politicians and civil servants.

The education of Indian kids in the plantations were left to the companies their parents worked for, who built primary schools within the estates with Tamil as the medium of instruction.

The Chinese community built their own schools with funding and tireless effort from the community itself. Chinese associations, trade unions, temples and mission groups mobilised to fill the gaps, bringing curriculum, books and even teachers from China.

Christian mission groups also went on to set up English medium schools for students left outside the government English schools.

And that is, more or less, how we ended up with different schools conducting different classes in different languages.

In the 1950s, a few commissions were formed to study the creation of a single syllabus. The Barnes Report that favoured Bahasa Malaysia as the sole medium of instruction met with resistance by Chinese and Tamil educationists and the Fenn-Wu Report was produced, that was more favourable to vernacular schools.

Finally, the Razak report, named after the then education minister, was accepted by both parties, a compromise of sorts between those favouring a single school stream, and those favouring maintaining vernacular schools.

During that time, a lot of things were uncertain, hence the scepticism – our syllabus was not quite set, and we did not yet have a network of tertiary institutions for students to enrol into after completing their secondary school, and so understandably parents and students would be more comfortable with more established English,Chinese schools and Tamil schools that provided time-tested pathways to England (and other countries), China/Taiwan and India respectively.

Apart from that, as business was still very much divided along ethno-centric lines, a vernacular education may have had an advantage over national schools.

Then there was of course, the fear of Chinese and Indian parents whose children attended vernacular schools that, joining a national school would lead to an erosion of cultural identity.

But now, 50 years later, are these concerns still valid?

We now have a network of over 20 public and 30 or so private universities, including seven foreign universities with campuses here, along with over 400 colleges that accept national school credentials.

This is apart from the many universities worldwide that accept the same. The exams taken in national and national type schools are similar now.

The erosion of culture and language too, should not be an argument anymore. There are many other places where culture can be learnt. Arts societies, cultural centres, cultural associations, etc that have propped all these years should be able to fill this gap, if any.

For example, the Punjabi national type school, once numbering 14, had its last one close down some years back. The role of preserving the language and culture of the Punjabis are now shouldered by the Gurdwaras, with most Gurdwaras now offering language lessons along with cultural, music and arts classes.

Two reasons often cited by parents to send their children to vernacular schools are quality and bias by teachers.

There have been many reports of increasing emphasis, both official and out of the classroom, on Islam and isolated incidences of students denied permission to practice their religion, including reports of crosses and religious symbols being banned, racial innuendoes being used against non-Malay students, mandatory Jawi classes and so on.

The quality of teachers in national schools are also said to be dwindling.

But will removing your kids from national schools and placing them in vernacular schools solve the problem?

Or would it serve to compound it?

The fewer non-Muslim students there are in a school, the less emphasis would be placed on their sensitivities, naturally. As unfair as it is, this may provide the justification that these little Napolean teachers seek to rationalise their actions.

Wouldn’t removing a portion of talented teachers, with better pay and working conditions and students to the vernacular schools make the situation at the national schools, even worse?

And would keeping vernacular schools be the best thing for building a national identity?

The formative primary school age is where children begin to make sense of the world around them. If the majority of their time is spent mainly with those of the similar ethnic background as them, would that be healthy for their social exposure?

Undoubtedly, there are great Malaysians produced by both national and national type schools. Contributions of national type schools to our children’s education can never be overstated. But perhaps it is time we relooked this and started to seriously move towards a single stream of national education.

National schools could start by streamlining policy and putting strict enforcement in place, particularly those involving racial and religious sensitivities, and ensure enough teachers for language classes so that students can still learn their own mother tongues without opting out of national schools.

If Singapore, with a much smaller Indian population than ours can offer five other Indian languages, apart from Tamil, in their primary schools, surely we could find one Mandarin and one Tamil teacher per school.

After all, if our southern neighbour could also put in place a plan to implement a single stream school system 10 years before the Razak Report was published, there is no real reason we cannot. – January 19, 2016.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.